Wearing those heavy wool overcoats in the rain. I have one of those, British, from that era. I wear it on really cold days for a dressy look.. man is that thing heavy, pulls your neck down.

Tough guys for sure. Makes me think of the Miners Union Hall in Sudbury in the 70's. Hundreds of beer bottles everywhere, beer on the table, beer on the floor, air was blue with thick smoke from cigs, ashtrays overflowing, air also blue with the cursing and crabbing about the 'company', all the guys with massive arm muscles, IF! there was a woman in the place she was behind the bar cracking open the beers. Those guys worked hard and they were some tough. Just don't see that anymore. Sudbury Saturday night.

At first, I thought it was about a process in our country--but when the narrator spoke of "sleepers," I knew it was in England. As has been noted, the differences in terminology and practice are understandable, even though we do not use chairs.

Oh, don't get the wrong impression, none of us are saying all the safety equipment I mentioned in an earlier post is a bad idea, far from it. Quite honestly I shuddered a bit when I saw those guys working in the foundry with no safety equipment at all.

Our admiration comes from what those men did with what they didn't have!

Died young? I'm sure some did. But looking at the film and when it was shot I wondered how many of those men survived Ypes, Passchendaele, Mons, the Somme, Cambrai, and all the other blood-baths of the First World War. If they survived all that, I'm sure they felt all the years that came after were pure gravy.

Back in 2002, I visited Edinburgh Castle. Within its walls is the Scottish War Memorial. It is a little chapel with stained glass windows and 12 alcoves, one for each Scottish regiment in the Great War. On a stand in front of each alcove is a ledger book with the hand written casualty lists for each day in the war. You can tell when the big battles were because there are page after page of MacDonalds, Campbells, Camerons and the rest. I don't know how much you are familiar with British military traditions but regiments are recruited from a fixed geographical area. Looking at all those clan names, you realize that whole family lines came to an end in one day. It sends shivers down your spine.

Oh certainly Backshop, I'm well aware of that. The British Army's a little different from ours. Here, you join the army, there, you join a regiment, and it's usually the closest one to where you live.

The German army used to be the same during the eras of both world wars, for the infantry regiments at least. Nowadays I'm not so sure how they do it.

It was the same here during our Civil War, with regiments raised by the states centered on geographical areas, and the results from the major battles could be (and often were) quite as devastating. The Civil War has been described as "brother fighting brother," but to put it more accurately it was usually brother fighting WITH brother, and with all the cousins too.

Then there were the nationalized National Guard infantry regiments in both world wars, recruited from certain geographic areas and just as subject to decimation, except by World War Two they'd assign brothers to different outfits.